Merry Christmas And Happy 2014

Merry Christmas and Happy 2014 from all of us at THEVINTAGELAUNDRY.COM

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Heavy Sigh, Face-palm With an Eye Roll Dismount

It has been proven to me again, and again that life is a great unfolding ... that opportunities, wisdom, and understanding will be revealed to me as I go along. I wait, as patiently as an instant-gratification junky can wait, for cues from the universe as to what I should fix my gaze and energies upon next. But here's the thing … and I hate "The Thing" …especially "my" thing. Because my thing is … STARTING. I'm a marvelous starter, a comer-upper of great ideas, an enthusiastic believer that if you work and live and love hard enough that everything is possible. I've started hundreds of things, DIY projects, blog posts, paintings, book writings, entrepreneurial ventures, relationships, conversations, thoughts, sentences … the list is endless and more than a little embarrassing. But here's my "Un-Thing" … FINISHING. I'm like the opposite, evil twin of a premature ejaculation … the iceman never cometh, if you know what I'm sayin'.

And, naturally, the only logical next step in my ever-so-cluttered mind is to start a new project … (insert face-palm.) The new project is a book (insert combination heavy sigh, face-palm with an eye roll dismount.) The chapters are good-natured pokes at all that is me, but are also turning out to be a kind of love letters to myself and to others that share "The Thing." Writing about this has offered me a revelation that although I want to escape, running and screaming from this utterly frustrating habit I have of putting off till tomorrow what I could do the day after tomorrow - I've just decided to embrace it. Because, as they say, you are defined not so much by your imperfect moments, but by your reactions to them. 

So, only time will tell if I can see this "reaction" through to the end … wish me luck, think "finishing thoughts" and if necessary shame me into completing and publishing it.

Below is a snippet from one of the thirty-five chapters in the book. I hope you enjoy and have a marvelous Thursday!

Chapter 1

 

Read Label Before Use

You know how packaged products are required to have a label listing ingredients and such? Well, I think some people should come with them, as well … and I'm sorry to say, that I'm one of them! Before you even think of speaking to me or engaging me in any manner, you should probably read my label. It has recommendations for your use and safety (see label below.)

Nutritional Facts:

Calories: None of your business

Sodium:  Queen of the Swelling & Bloating Float in the High Blood Pressure & Congestive Heart Failure Thanksgiving Day Parade

Carbohydrates:  Girl please!

Sugar:  Can I get a witness?!

LeAnn Stephenson is fun for the whole family. Made from 100% morose introspection and existential crisis, she was founded in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1965. She played in the White Sands Basin Range where, twenty years earlier, the Trinity nuclear (atomic) bomb was tested (which explains a lot.) She contains more than 75% of the world's eyebrow hair (see nuclear bomb) and in a blind taste test, 2 out of 5 children tested chose LeAnn Stephenson as their mother.

Warning: 

LeAnn Stephenson's singing voice has been described as "very disturbing." 

So, as you can see, I may appear to be perfectly harmless, but I can assure you that I am anything but.

For starters ...

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Catnip Roasting on an Open Fire

We have a crazy cat.  She's called Eva June.  She's a beautiful Maine Coon with striking yellow-green eyes . . . . she's also the spawn of Satan . . .  wicked, evil, mean, and totally unsocial.  She won't let anyone touch her, except me and on occasion my daughter, who's her Mom (but not her real Mom). Most of the time I want to dragon-kick her across the room for using the furniture as her own personal scratching post or string her up by her elbows for hacking up little kitty cigars that I will, without fail, step in with bare feet.  But, for some reason, when she does want to cuddle, I'm her girl.  Which makes me fairly sure that if we were trapped in the house in a blizzard and everyone died . . . . She'd totally eat me last.

I tell you that to tell you this, Christmas decorating at our house is like hugging our crazy cat, "Evil June:"  a little dangerous, a little warm, and a lot of awesome.  Tradition follows that we crank up the psychotically-challenged Christmas carols in her honor.  To start, we play the old standard, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" to soothe Eva's schizophrenia.  We celebrate her multiple personalities with, "We Three Kings of Disorient Are" and poke fun at her paranoia with, "Santa Claws Is Coming To Get You." As a tribute to her dementia we play, "I 'Think' I'll Be Home For Christmas" followed closely by her personality disorder's favorite, "You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pee, Maybe I'll Tell You Why."  And finally we all join in with a rousing-ly manic rendition of, "Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Office and the Stores and the Cars and the Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and . . ."

Hope your Christmas decorating is bright, beautiful, and full of crazy kitty power.  Here are few photos of our efforts.

We hung our Christmas wreath on our newly painted door! We added a bit of vintage silver and a wide red satin ribbon to our boxwood wreath to give it a little patina.

My girl baby was home from university and got to hang all of her childhood ornaments and reminisce . . .  she loves to decorate the Christmas tree …

… and my baby boy just loves the Christmas tree!

Baby It Was Cold Outside!  
We had temperatures in the teens during our decorating extravaganza, so, the Hubbs 
built a roaring fire, chilled a bottle of champagne and threw down a sheepskin rug  to 
keep our tootsies warm!

And it just wouldn't feel right without our vintage ornaments.

I'm kind of partial to our Shiny Brite collections! I love to contain them in apothecary jars on the mantel, in silver Revere bowls on side tables and in niches!

 
And this is what happens when I clean vintage brass and gold flatware all afternoon . . .

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Simply Brilliant: Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

My girl baby is in the middle of her sophomore year at university.  My boy baby is in the middle of the exciting ordeal of applying to universities he would like to attend next Fall after he graduates from high school this June.  He would like to be a filmmaker and is concentrating his search on universities that have exemplary Radio-Television-Film colleges.  Austin's very own University of Texas is well-known for its program and boasts some very successful alumni.  Topping my son's list of favorite directors and screenwriters is fellow Texan and UT alumnus, Wes Anderson.

Which brings me to today's Simply Brilliant talent.  Anderson's next film will be entitled The Grand Budapest Hotel and will star his regular collaborators Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman, along with many others cited below. It recounts the adventures of Gustave H., a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune - all against the back-drop of a suddenly and dramatically changing Continent.

Other Anderson films that might be of interest are  Bottle Rocket (1996), Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), a stop-motion animation adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, Fantastic Mr. Fox, released in 2009, and perhaps his best received film to date, Moonrise Kingdom, which opened the Cannes Film Festival 2012.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is to be released March 7, 2014 in the U.S. with cinematography by Robert Yeoman and screenwriting/direction by Wes Anderson.  I can't wait for its release and would like to suggest you not miss it either!

Video and photos courtesty:  IMBb and cine.gr

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Two Words, One Finger

The life that I think I lead and the actual life that I have are two distinctly different states of being.  Each comes with its own appalling revelations and pace.  That is to say, that the past week or so has left me a little ruffled, unsure of myself, and questioning every move.  I appall this state of being and I have something to say to these feelings … and I'm sorry to say it involves two words and one finger.

Hence, the touch-y, feel-y quote above.  Just needed to remind myself to live an authentic life and relish the messy unplanned parts, as well as the perfectly planned ones.

Happy Thursday to you!

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